Skoda Oz calls for more Octavia RS230 stock

Skoda Australia has delivered an urgent memo to its head office: give us more Octavia RS230s.

The Australian arm has requested as much stock as it can get it hands on ahead of the most powerful Octavia wagon and sedan variants landing in local showrooms around October. However, stakeholders admit the fettled Octavia will only have so much appeal, given there is no option for an automatic transmission as in other markets.

Sporting the same clever electro-mechanical front differential as the Volkswagen Golf GTI Performance model, the manual-only RS230 will go head-on with the likes of Subaru's WRX-engined Levorg, priced at about $50,000. The '230' designation derives from the 2.0-litre turbocharged engine's output of 230 horsepower, or 169kW as we know it, a small jump over the current Octavia RS' 162kW output. This enables a hastened 0-100km/h time of 6.7 seconds in manual guise.

The RS230 also has standalone visual cues inside and out which distinguish it from the garden-variety Octavia.

Skoda Australia director Michael Irmer revealed to Drive this week that he had asked for more RS230 stock in the lead-up to its October launch.

"Production is very limited. In fact, if we hadn't brought it to Australia Skoda would have sold it elsewhere. So in fact we are taking cars out of some other country's allocations in order to sell it here. We need it, it's an important car and it's a brand builder," he said.

"We're still building our brand in Australia and these sort of products are really important to that."

Asked how many RS230s would be allocated to Australia, Irmer indicated it would be in the hundreds – a figure which is likely to mirror demand. Initially it was reported that only 50 RS230s would set sail to Australia.

"We've really been battling for production, so it's well possible that we have a bit of a wait on these cars," Irmer said.

"It's not going to be a high demand model. It will complement the Golf Performance GTI quite well. There's not that many family cars left where you can buy a manual, plus we're getting wagon and sedan.

"We're already battling for supply on this model but natural demand for manuals is much, much less than DSGs – less than 10 per cent of the Australian market

"To be honest, it is an enthusiast offering more so than a mainstream offering."